New dessert shop in Plano swirls out the hottest new trend in ice cream

New dessert shop in Plano swirls out hottest new trend in ice cream

Thai-style rolled ice cream is so 2017. And froyo what? The rising trend is soft-serve ice cream, and there's a brand new place to get it: Sugar Pine Creamery is an ice cream and bubble tea shop that opened in January in Plano, at 6832 Coit Rd., in a strip center at the corner of Legacy Drive.

At Sugar Pine Creamery, their goal is to create soft-serve ice cream that goes beyond traditional chocolate and vanilla, with flavors that blend Eastern and Western tastes.

"We do a chocolate flavor, but always with a twist," says spokesperson Jessica Lionarda. "This week it's chocolate hazelnut, which tastes like Nutella, but better."

Their daily menu features six flavors, two of which are always dairy-free. And they rotate flavors in and out.

This week's lineup includes chocolate hazelnut, rose, black sesame, and salted caramel; the dairy-free flavors are limoncello and honeydew.

Any cup or cone comes with choice of toppings from a dozen options such as chocolate sprinkles, dark chocolate wafer, colorful star-shaped sprinkles, and toasted coconut. They also rotate in toppings to match flavors. For example, a recent combo consisted of mascarpone soft-serve ice cream with an option to get crumbled potato chips. Mmmm.

Their bubble tea is a dairy-free milk tea in flavors such as taro, honeydew, salted caramel, and hazelnut; they also offer regular iced tea with yummy flavor options such as strawberry and green apple.

Beyond the uniqueness of their flavors, they also stand out thanks to their cones, imported from The Konery, an artisanal cone maker from Brooklyn which offers an array of distinctive flavors. Sugar Pine regularly offers four: cinnamon brown sugar, midnight vanilla, salted blue corn, and pink vanilla.

Their cones boast vibrant colors that turn the ice cream into a visual treat. "They're also dairy-free," Lionarda says.

The cone was part of the inspiration for their name: The sugar pine is the tallest pine tree, with the longest cones of any conifer, and is itself shaped like a cone.

Soft serve wasn't even part of their original plan. They started out wanting to do a bubble tea place, but became entranced with the idea of soft-serve; it soon evolved to become a dominant part of their concept.

"Soft-serve is still a new idea for a lot of people," Lionarda says. "We get people who come in and see the swirl and mistake it for frozen yogurt. But we wanted to do ice cream."